


Shiak

by Joysweeper



Series: Crucibles [4]
Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemon, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-08
Updated: 2013-03-01
Packaged: 2017-11-24 04:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/630430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joysweeper/pseuds/Joysweeper
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of short stories set in a version of the Galaxy Far, Far Away in which the Force is entangled with Dust, and humans and some near-humans have dæmons, animal-shaped manifestations of their consciousness or souls.</p><p>Leia's dæmon changed his name, after Alderaan was destroyed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Luke found Leia sitting at the game table, staring at nothing. She’d been so angry there in the cockpit, but seeing her like this, with her shoulders hunched and her dæmon crouching catlike with his heavy head low... Luke hesitated, and then came to sit besides her. She looked his way and gifted him with a brief, faded smile.

He hated that despite everything that had changed since he’d seen her hologram, he was still thrilled by her nearness. It was unthinkable to leave. Unbearable. Besides, _she’d_ come to sit by _him_ before he’d needed to take a turret against the TIE fighters. It was only fair.

It seemed neither of them had anything to say right now, but after a few minutes, Peregrine spoke. “We didn’t exactly... I’m Peregrine.”

“It’s Shiak.” Leia’s dæmon had a throaty, pleasing voice.

“I thought Leia called you Vethia.” She’d shouted it, anyway, when they’d been crossing that chasm and he had almost fallen. Maybe he _would_ have fallen, if Peregrine hadn’t been there.

Leia’s dæmon was a Naboo tusk-cat, very small for the species, so small that if Leia sat on his back the toes of both feet touched the ground. But they’d seen how quickly he could carry her, all the same. Now he stared unblinking at Peregrine. “It was. It’s Shiak now.”

Luke felt Leia raise her head, but she didn’t contest it. “Oh,” Peregrine said. “Okay.”

There was nothing more to say. Peregrine crept into his clothing and stuck, liquid, to his skin. They tried to fend it off, but now, safe in hyperspace, all the adrenaline had worn off and Ben’s death played in their mind.

Luke had only seen a moment of the fight, and it had all been over in seconds, but now it seemed to repeat, slowly, with every detail crisp. How the Lord Darth Vader had towered over the old man. How he didn’t seem to have a dæmon, and one _should_ have been ranging about during the fight, trying to reach Ben’s dæmon, or trying to distract Ben if she couldn’t do that.

It would have been easy for him to hide a phylactery under his cloak, but Peregrine reminded him now what they’d always heard about people who’d had the procedure. It seemed to be born up by how bad those stormtroopers had been at shooting while on the move. Fighter pilots never had phylacteries, and everyone said Vader was the best combat pilot in the Empire, no matter _how_ much strain he was under.

But Ben had said Vader had been his student. His most brilliant pupil... Surely that meant he’d been a Jedi once. Maybe Vader’s dæmon was distant, too.

Thinking about that was just a distraction, a way to avoid thinking about how the fight had gone. So quickly. That moment when Ben’s eyes had met his. The way he’d smiled, and raised his lightsaber in a weird way, and even Luke, who knew nothing about lightsaber duels, had known it wasn’t right. And it hadn’t been. Vader had taken that opening.

And Ben -

Had he collapsed, or - evaporated? Like a dæmon would. No, ridiculous. People didn’t _do_ that.

But he had died. They knew that. They _knew_.

Luke and Peregrine had cried out with one voice. Neither could remember what they’d shouted. The memory was just of the horror of it, the wrongness, how utterly helpless they had been. Just like back home...

There, on the Death Star, there had been a rush of small wings, almost in his ear. Hard flight feathers had just brushed his skin, once, leaving it tingling. Obi-Wan’s voice, harsh and urgent. “Run, Luke!”

Had that even been real? Peregrine shifted, and Luke squeezed, feeling her substance bulge out from between his fingers. He knew almost nothing about Jedi dæmons. Really, though, all the wild speculation in the galaxy could not change what had happened.

“We’re left alone now.” He hadn’t known he’d said it out loud until something made him turn his head. For a moment he saw Leia and Shiak both with the same look in their eyes - wide, wild, lost.

Shiak looked away, and Leia blinked and was once again the commanding Princess. “There’s still the Rebel Alliance, Luke. The plans loaded in Artoo’s memory are bound to be useful, or the Empire wouldn’t have fought so hard to keep it from us. The people there -” she faltered, but only for an instant -”We’ll have a fight ahead of us. There’s a lot we need to do.”

She shifted position, sat with less of a slump, and stared intently into her dæmon’s eyes. Probably planning. Luke died of shame, just a little. She’d thought he’d included her in ‘we!’

And he should have. Tatooine... the people he loved best, the people who’d kept him there, were gone. The homestead was burned. But his homeworld was still there. Leia had it worse. What right did he have to think about how _he_ had it when she was right there? And so clearly able to think of other things, for now, things that needed to be done.

Shiak's hooved claws clacked against the deck as he paced in tight circles. Luke followed him with his eyes so Peregrine could see it.

"We'll do better," she whispered, to him alone.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit from this 'verse's version of Splinter of the Mind's Eye.

“Wait a second. Hear that?” Obediently Luke stopped, trying to ignore the mud rising around his boots. Peregrine had no ears, but through their bond she could use his, and sometimes she noticed things he didn’t.

“Another animal?” he asked carefully. The quality of the call seemed a little different from the barrage of cries, hoots, howls, whistles, and buzzings that he could hear from the swampy jungle all around him. These were short, deep sounds, and something about them was sort of like a human’s throat clearing. That might not mean anything, though. Luke knew nothing about Mimban’s wildlife.

His dæmon moved her fluid body through a shrug. “Probably. It’s right along our search vector, through.” Anxiety bled into her tone. “Maybe it found Leia.”

Artoo-Deetoo, already having a difficult time following him through the muck, whistled in protest as Luke picked up the pace, barely bothering to test the ground before him.

“ _Ahough! Ahough!_ ” It _was_ along his search vector, pretty much exactly, to the point where as he got closer and it got louder Luke didn’t bother with the vector at all. He just followed the sound. Behind him Artoo made a noise of his own, a shrill sound halfway between a whistle and a shriek. For a moment the throat-clearing faltered. Then it resumed again, more emphatic.

And then, as he got in close enough to see a starfighter on the other side of a thicket, it stopped. Luke stopped too. Warm with his body heat, Peregrine slid protectively around his neck. “We’ve got to,” she reminded him.

Just a few steps on there was the startlingly loud report of a blaster firing and a patch of the crinkled vegetation covering the muck blackened. Shaken - that had barely missed him! Luke shouted, “It’s me! It’s us and Artoo.”

He heard Threepio, first happy and then changing his tone and scolding his counterpart, who rolled forwards and gave as good as he got, but Luke didn’t relax until he heard her. “Luke, are you all right?”

Like a sensible being she’d stayed in the cockpit, and Shiak lounged outside of it besides her. At least her Y-wing seemed to be in better shape than _his_ ship. Which wasn’t saying much, really, but it was sitting more or less on its belly with intact, opened canopy up.

Luke climbed up and they discussed the situation and their plans, ignoring the counterpart banter. Meanwhile Peregrine snaked out an extension of herself, hesitating until Shiak gravely extended his head and touched her with his nose.

She then slid free of Luke and puddled next to Leia’s stately dæmon. “It was you making that noise, right?”

“Yes. It’s a call tusk-cats use, and it carries well even in mist like this. We’d hoped you would hear it.”

“We sure did. So... what does it mean?”

Peregrine couldn’t see anything outside of Luke’s field of view, and so if Shiak had a particular expression as he paused, neither her nor her human could know. “It’s a contact call. When a pack is split up and they can’t find each other, they start calling like that.”

“Oh.” She was quiet, then, focusing more on the preparations to go out and hike overland. As Luke helped Leia pack and became half-deliriously aware of her nearness, Peregrine crept a little closer to Shiak. When she curled a soft tentacle over his hooved paw, he did not protest.

**Author's Note:**

> Naboo tusk-cats are perfect for Leia.
> 
> The Wildlife of Star Wars describes them as "Regal in disposition, confident in nature, strong, swift, and smart." They mate for life and live in small prides of the mated pair and offspring, the males leave when they hit maturity and find mates, they instinctively act as shepherds for prey animals called shaaks.
> 
> They assist in police work, are mounts in parades, they have huge teeth but are naturally gentle and protective towards children... While they tame easily as cubs, they can easily revert back to the wild.
> 
> Politician and servant of the people (doglike aspects, keeps herds of weaker animals), hunted and on the run a lot (horse/antelopelike aspects), regal and authoritative (lionlike aspects), far-sighted, sometimes quite decorative, sense of justice (police work), protective, wandered without a home until she made one, dangerous if crossed.
> 
> And tusk-cats look like they're related to narglatch, stealthy solitary alpha predators who always give birth to male and female twins which hunt together for a few years. People think the cubs are cute, but they grow up into very dangerous animals.


End file.
